Peita Diamantidis
Hello and welcome to the Ensombl AdviceTech Podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidis. And the guest joining me here today to deep dive into Lumiant actually worked for both MLC and NAB here in Australia, before moving to be the head of product with Lumiant in the US of A, and he’s also the host of the Lumiant live podcast. So we expect big things from this guest. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. Mark Akeroyd.
Mark Akeroyd
I tell you what, I tell you why, as someone that has a podcast, I am shamed by how good to that entrances, you made me feel so special. It’s it’s so lovely to be here. You know, I feel like this is a radio host sort of interview like, you know, longtime listener first time caller. I’ve been a big fan of yours for a while I’m so so proud to be on. And it’s so nice. I can say say things like get a how are you and not have someone go? Yeah.
Peita Diamantidis
Let alone actually understanding the general things you say certain words that just never going to understand in the US. Our accent just messes them up, doesn’t it?
Mark Akeroyd
Absolutely. I’m, I’m a sucker. I always say, you know, I’ll talk to you this hour, though. And they think I’m saying I’m getting an avocado. No, no, that’s not it. So I’ve learned how to, I’m trying at least you know, I say things like if you catch me, I say process now instead of process data instead of data. Nish me when you recently niche niche. Niche niche niche. It’s yeah, and you know why? It’s niche. Our late great friend Gavin Spitzer, who, who was on our board before he passed away here at Lumut taught me how to remember it. When he used to coach advisors around niches, yes. His his his. His statement was niches to riches.
Peita Diamantidis
And that’s how you remember, see, that’s going to help. Now I want to get that right.
Mark Akeroyd
Very good. When you expand to the US, there you go. You said,
Peita Diamantidis
Well, you do I mean, it’s, we all joke about it. But you know, these are English speaking countries. And if you go to the UK, the difference is they’ve got that we’ve got the same rhyming slang thing happening. Whereas the US it is another language, you know, and there is a translation required. Absolutely. 100% Well, look, before we pick your brain about all things Lumiant let’s get to know you through your use of technology. What is your most used emoji? Do you even use emojis?
Mark Akeroyd
Yeah, I assume you’re referencing this whole fact that apparently emojis aren’t cool anymore. So I don’t know the youth of today. They’re changing the rules in front of us. I certainly still use emojis. My most used one would be the little Shaka sign. You know, the years fireman thumb and pinky finger. I reckon I use that as as a yes. As an okay, as a call. As I don’t know what to say. But I acknowledge. Yeah. I get in trouble quite a bit.
Peita Diamantidis
Nice. And I love that. That’s the first time that one has come up on the show. So well done. Yeah. Unique off the bat. All right. And how about Nokia smartphones, smartphones. Some of us even have them now on our wrist I have I have defied that trend to date. But we all are attached permanently. If you had to wipe everything off the smartphone, and only put three apps back on what would you put on your phone?
Mark Akeroyd
Okay, so I mean, not to timestamp the recording, but we’re still in the middle of the ashes. Here, he and obviously, as someone that’s moved over the US, I need to stay up to date. So I wouldn’t get rid of my cricket app right now. I am constantly on slack for work. So I need that. And then probably as someone that has moved overseas maybe rightly or wrongly, I’m all over Instagram at the moment, try and try and keep up to date with everything that’s going on back home with all my friends and family. And we’ve got a lovely seven month old here that’s moved over with us. So being able to share photos of her to everyone that’s interested is is helpful as well.
Peita Diamantidis
Oh, congratulations. You’re looking remarkably fresh and well rested for you.
Mark Akeroyd
Thank you I look I’m very lucky I won’t go I won’t go to India because I know everyone’s parenting journey is quite different and I’m just lucky to have a really lovely partner who does a lot of the heavy lifting and a very very good baby.
Peita Diamantidis
Well and you know what good babies mean torturous teenagers so you know just enjoy it while you can. She’s at some point.
Mark Akeroyd
She’s got a personality now she knows what she wants. She knows what she doesn’t want and yeah, I tell you what, it’s the daylight hours that have given me the headaches not the not the nighttime she is. She’s everywhere at the moment.
Peita Diamantidis
Right Alright, big trouble, big trouble. All righty, let’s dive into Lumiant. So I think most of the listeners, listeners will have heard of Lumiant. But for those that haven’t, let’s start at that really top level, what category do you guys fall into? In the advice tech space? And who are you sort of normally lined up against? If somebody’s taking a look at their options?
Mark Akeroyd
Yeah, totally. So if anyone’s a follower of Michael Kitsis, over here in the US, he puts out that massive FinTech map, and he’s got us he’s got us in a category called advice, engagement. And for us, that feels right. And we’ll go into why that feels right. I assume later in the, in the episode, but you know, we’re a tool, or a series of tools that turn into a platform that help people engage with their clients, and help their clients engage with their advice. And we’ll talk a lot about that, obviously, as we go. And typically, the people that use us or our typical sort of, sort of comparison, especially in the Australian market, we often get people go, Oh, you’re a bit bit like an astute wheel. And then, you know, some people look at our data aggregation, or you’re a bit like a My prosperity. And then, you know, there’s all there’s all sorts of comparisons, depending on the modules that we sort of gathered, they’re probably the two that come up quite a bit.
Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and I think, you know, anything that’s client facing sort of does narrow down the field a fair bit, because there are, you know, superduper long list of tools that advisors use, that are actually client facing, but I do think some of them are almost like the bare bones of that, and the adviser creates their own journey. And the it’s just the tool, or it’s the, you know, the the outside of that, that sort of Portal or whatever it might be. Whereas I think, from my sense, and you can go into this, but for my sense from limit is there’s, there’s far more of the journey designed within Lumiant, like you guys are trying to give as many tools as possible for the adviser to make that, you know, maybe cobbling together some bits and Lumiant, to have that experience rather than the adviser creating everything from scratch.
Mark Akeroyd
Yeah, I think that’s a really astute observation and good assessment. You know, we, we certainly have a framework not to say that you do things in order in Lumiant, one of the things that we’ll talk about, as we go that we help advisors do is figure out what their best journey and experience is just through Lumiant, based on their their cloud experience they’re trying to design. But, you know, any good tech provider should have a view around how their modules interact and work together. And when we think about the problems that we’re trying to solve, what we are trying to solve is really scalable, client centric advice, experiences. Yeah. And to do that, we’ve got to think through, okay, at this part of the discovery process, at this part of the Progress meeting experience, what modules are you using when in what likely order so that they feel connected and feel right, because we know when they don’t, it’s confusing for the advisor. And if it’s confusing for the advisor, it’s even more confusing for the client. And one of the challenges that we’re trying to solve really proactively is, we absolutely want to solve that challenge for the advisor. But we actually really, really want to solve that challenge for the client. Because if we can help more and more clients engage with their advice, and will no doubt talk about this, and you’ll hear it in all our language or on our website, as you see it. Even those clients that we would typically say are the non financial spouse. So those typically haven’t engaged in advice before because for whatever reason, we’ve had our K propositions delivered solely around understanding finances and alpha and modern portfolio theory. But equally for those that do want that proposition, how do we do that in a much more aligned way to someone’s life and values and well being.
Peita Diamantidis
And it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting approach that I think, you know, every practice is really going to have to end up doing, we haven’t today because our client experience or the way we serve our customers, we’ve, you know, we’ve had heavily influenced by legislation and look, we’ll get that. But we are coming into a new phase now where some of that’s going to loosen up a little. And the combination of that with tech is going to make this game really interesting off off air before we sort of hit record, you were talking about how different it is in the US and how, you know, they’re sort of saying to you are cool Lumiant it can be the differentiator for me, you know, it can make me stand out amongst other advisors which I find interesting because to me as good as a tool like Lumia can be the differentiator really is the advisors designed experience Lumiant or other tools like it just deliver on that, you know, but yeah, advisors haven’t haven’t necessarily taken the time to really design that experience like to really think it through. Are you guys seeing that too?
Mark Akeroyd
Huh? 100% It’s one of the first things we do with anyone that buys Lumiant or is thinking about Lumiantis, is quiz them on what’s the client experience they’re trying to solve for, because to your point, and this is somewhat controversial coming from the head of product at Lumiant. The tech is merely a facilitator of that client experience, right. And I’m really proud of our tech. And I think we’re solving a great need in the industry. And I’d argue that it’s probably the biggest need. But that aside, you could use us you could use a steward wheel, you could piece together some stuff on dash, you and the way that you think about your client and the way that you think about the experience that you give your client in the way that you structure, your tech stack and all your internal processes, and then align your staff and people around that make the difference.
Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, 100%. And in fact, I, and I’ve witnessed this with technology, where it all goes bad. And often, it’s that there’s a badly designed experience, or a crappy experience, and they add tech, and it just amplifies the problem. Because it’s another point of friction, it’s another clunky thing, the team get irritated that the clients get irritated. Whereas if they really designed the experience, well, maybe alongside the tech, for sure, but they’re really given it that thought that’s when it feels fluid and natural and frictionless and, and sort of magical, you know,
Mark Akeroyd
100% really, really easy example, you know, we’ve got a suite of sort of pre meeting experiences, you know, survey type tools. And if you weren’t on board with that, how you preposition that survey completely dictates whether or not it’s gonna get completed, right? We could, we could, we could design it as beautiful and as intuitive as possible. But if you’re on the phone going, Hey, look, I’m going to send you this survey, it’s gonna ask some really awkward questions that, you know, just go with it, you know, take about five to six minutes. And it’ll just, it’ll, it’ll be helpful for us to get to know you a little bit, then, as a client, I’m not super excited.
Peita Diamantidis
And invasive right?
Mark Akeroyd
Here, right? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And, you know, we’ll, we’ll get into this right. But if you consider tech facilitates a great client experience, our definition of experience is it’s time well invested for the client. So it needs to feel that way.
Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And he almost to the point of, like, I think the bar needs to be set for all of us where they want to spend the time as in they’re really excited about that time. You know, whereas I think we’ve right, but we’re so conditioned for us to be one of those things they should do? Oh, God, I’ve gotta go to the advisor, you know, it’s like the accountant was like doing the returns, like, right? So I think, and that’s okay, I get it. But I feel like we’ve got to raise our expectations higher, and say, no, no, we should be trying to build these experiences where people are like, that was fantastic. Like, it’s got
Mark Akeroyd
to be that for a multitude of reasons. none more so than the fact of the efficiency game is a race to the bottom. There’s only so especially in the regulated environment, there’s only so so efficient or as efficient as you can get within process. And then, you know, if you stack on top of that the price compression that’s occurring in the industry, you know, how do I charge more and get more value given that my operating costs are going more? Well, I mean, efficiencies off the game, because you can only get so efficient, then you’ve got to add more value to your client. And how do you do that we believe it’s a great experience, one that they do believe in, not to mention all the flow on referrals and all that sort of stuff that comes with it. Which
Peita Diamantidis
right and look, we’ll dive in, you know, the the listeners being very patient with us as we sort of talk about these more esoteric,
Mark Akeroyd
sorry, listeners, we’re gonna nerd out for a bit.
Peita Diamantidis
But I think the interesting thing is we often you know, there’s all these reports and surveys and studies done about what Australians will pay for advice and I struggle with those only because what it’s saying is what will they pay for advice the way it is now? Now, of course, the figure is 500 bucks, like, we haven’t engaged and whereas you know, people pay 1000s of dollars for something that is a wonderful experience. I mean, I am super sad but in I think it’s in Florida at the Star Wars you know, Disneyland So Disney World Star Wars have been, you can have this experience where you stay for the weekend, and you’re in character for the whole weekend, right? And you get to interact with people like a living story. Now you can do the ride, you can do all of that. But you’re also when you’re having dinner, you’re in character, you know, so you can be Han Solo if you want to all that sort of stuff. Now I was ready to just slept down whatever they asked me for. I wasn’t interested in what the dollars were like that would be the coolest thing ever. Now, as it turns out, there aren’t as many of me as you’d like for that experience. So they like hold on. Not so much the people don’t want to pay but is that they can’t pay because it was quite expensive. But I do think that’s, you know, when we’re looking at something that’s legislatively defined, that’s when we’ll pay 500. Whereas when it’s a wonderful experience in the moment, but also our memory of the impact is high. That’s when people will pay a fortune for it.
Mark Akeroyd
Yeah, we the way we like to think about it is if all you’re doing is delivering service, whether that be a product, whether that be an annual review, yeah, then you’re in the service game and services are commoditized, right, everyone’s got a service. And that’s where you’re down that lower end of the spectrum. But if you deliver an experience, because that is time well invested, people are more likely to pay for it. I mean, you know, really, really topical but you know, people are shelling out 1000 3000 bucks a year for Taylor Swift tickets. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a Swifty. Right. I get it. That’s fine. But it’s a Snapple that. That is I’ve spent four hours on ticker tech. I’m going to a three hour concert. Granted, it’ll be the night of your life,
Peita Diamantidis
it will be gonna be a pain in the neck, there’s going to be accused of being a security scanner. The whole thing is designed to I was watching.
Mark Akeroyd
So she’s been here in Chicago, where I am already on the IRS to and they’re posting to turn up to the merch tent the day before. Right? Like people are doing it. Right. What are they doing is a great experience. They believe in it. It’s time well invested. Yeah.
Peita Diamantidis
Yep. And it’s like the believing in it. And also feeling like the whole being a Swifty like, this is a big thing, feeling part of a community. I think that’s another thing that as an advice we haven’t tapped into nearly enough, I think for influencers 100% get it? Right, that’s actually what they building. But I think, you know, most advice friends, we haven’t got there yet. Well, I mean, which is great, because that’s a journey that can then add value and yes, huge upside, but I think we’ve got a lot a lot to learn. So then let’s talk about Lumiant and, you know, clearly you guys have like it’s evolved into into quite a significant tool now. What was that initial thing that it was trying to solve? What what you know, caused it to come about?
Mark Akeroyd
Yeah, so I mean, anyone that’s heard our our founder Santi barage speak you know, probably has heard this story before but I’ll give you my mike Ackroyd spin on it. As as I feel it and sort of why I joined riot and there’s there’s a few things that are gonna sound like understatement of the century as I talk through this right but here we go. The advice landscape is changing. understatement, the century tech consumer, consumer behavior is changing. understatement. this century. Yeah, trust for the industry has been on the wobble for quite some time. Yep. Understatement this century. So we’re seeing more and more people want to start to trust different sources, see different areas of advice, see different propositions, right, because they, they’re disengaging? Yeah, to be honest, we as an industry, we are the royal way as an industry, as someone that’s participated in it for 13 years now. We’ve done a pretty good job at disengaging clients ourselves with the advice because we build experiences, I will actually I’ll say we haven’t built experiences. We’ve built service propositions around product around people that understand finances, and we know that they’re their genders, their races, there are types of clients, we call them the non financial spouses that are completely disengaged from that experience. And when you put all that together, it sort of creates this massive melting pot of client problems. Remember, I said Lumiant is here to solve the client problem first and foremost, because we think everyone should get really engaging advice, experiences. But on top of that, we know that there’s business problems. Yeah. So right, moving from a product proposition to a client proposition. Cool story, Mark, but that’s pretty hard work.
Peita Diamantidis
So where’s that magic? Wave that magic wand? Yeah, that’d
Mark Akeroyd
be excellent. Thanks, concentric. And, but on top of that, you know, their organic growth is slow. Some people in pockets are getting it. That’s fine. Things like talent recognition and talent sort of retention is slow and hard because you’re not everyone signing up to learn how to create alpha in an investment portfolio. Yeah, as a financial advice firm. We know tech stacks are diluted because I can’t remember if we read through your bid for a bit now kind of if we said this before it was we recorded or after but, you know, there’s all these great new shiny toys that we think is going to fix the problem. So we go out and buy it and it’s so easy to buy this tech and then you know, we we’ve all of a sudden suddenly got a home a car for those Simpsons fans, to test that For those that don’t know, The Simpsons reference, it’s where you get the best of everything, put it all together, and it doesn’t look quite right. It’s a disaster. So Frankenstein, Frankenstein, it’s a more permanent reference. So you chuck all that stuff together. And we sort of thought to ourselves, Well, okay, there’s two key problems that we need to solve here. How do we help advisors move from being the smartest person in the room, or the most intelligent person in the room to the most emotionally intelligent person in the room to create really client centric propositions? Because we, we think that’s the skill that you need to create a client centric proposition, that deep empathy of your end client. So that’s problem number one. Problem number two is how do we support you as a tech provider to help you get scalable people process and tech? Yeah. So simply, if they’re the two problems that we’re trying to solve, the way that we’re trying to go brown about it is in a three pronged approach. So how do we create tech enabled advice? Number one, right, cool. That’s why we’re a FinTech that enables you to quantify meaningful and engaging conversations, because that’s actually where we believe the power of advice lies. Yeah, know, great advisors have great conversations that are deep that get into what’s most important to a client. But we know that that’s really hard to demonstrate, sometimes, you know, it might get stuck on a yellow piece of paper, or might get stuck on a whiteboard, that becomes a little JPEG assigned to x plane file notes. So that’s, that’s problem number two. Problem number three is ultimately wrap it all together in a memorable, measurable and scalable experience. So one that your clients rave about, one that you can say, hey, we were here. And when I say we were here, not just the amount of your investment.
Peita Diamantidis
We were here, you felt my state of mind. Yeah, yeah. Right.
Mark Akeroyd
And now you’re here and scalable, meaning it’s wrapped within a great process wrapped within an experience in a way that anyone in your practice can participate or knows what’s going on. Yeah, so you know, especially when we think about those EQ type skills, and those those soft skills around a client’s values and well being, we know that that’s a skill that’s learned over so much time, right, I speak to 30 year industry vets that have developed that through copious sales, training courses, copious interviews, that’s a hard skill to pass down, because principal advisors also have the biggest books in their in their businesses, therefore, they have the less least amount of time to train the next generation. So that’s why you made an astute observation before around these modules speaking to each other, we sort of wanted a bit of a point and shoot approach if you needed to, right, you were in a values conversation using the Lumiant values module. Anyone could pick it up and go, right, if I just followed this screen and pointed to the question, I’d largely be okay. Now, great advisors know that it’s question 234, that’s not on the screen that makes the experience. Yes. But your newer advisors can still still have a great conversation using the screen.
Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, cool. Yeah. And there’s power in in that structure, you know, its power and giving them the structure so that then they can gradually learn that and they’ll get deeper and deeper, it’s, it’s an interesting thing, because I think people often think empathy is is understanding, or aren’t they kind or you know, all that sort of stuff. And in part it is, but it’s also an ability to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes, that’s very hard to do, when you have no insight into their shoes, if you’ve not had multiples of those conversations with all sorts of different people, then it’s harder for you to have that EQ, you know, it’s harder for you to have that empathy. So, you’re right, there is almost a volume game here in terms of those conversations. But instead of forcing newer advisors to start from scratch, then to have a tool that sort of gives them the starting point, almost gives them the license to ask you like, well, this is the this is the process for us. I’m going to ask these questions between an awkward but let’s get going with it. Yeah, let’s go with this interview. Right. So So I think there’s power in that and, and pairing in then then like you say, adding their own layers, adding their own depth to it. And and that’s where also the differentiator will be I mean, some advice practices will use this sort of raw information that just comes out of the tool, you guys give them for the values, and then move deeply into technical stuff. Like they’ll use it, it’ll provide context for advice, but they’ll sort of see it as as a bit more superficial or just that levels fine. Others could make an entire coaching exercise out of just that. You know, so it just comes down to then once again, we’re talking about you know, the customer experience is what is the experience you want to deliver and there is no right or wrong here. Use the tool and go hard in the bits that you enjoy that you know that your clients love. Have you know, and then you can design your experience that way?
Mark Akeroyd
Absolutely. That’s, that’s exactly exactly how we think about it.
Peita Diamantidis
So then for the practices that are really, I mean, with any tech tool, there’s the people that take it on, don’t get it, therefore don’t continue. There’s the ones that take it on and use it, and it’s okay. And then there’s the others that sort of go hard and really get it. What do you think? How does the practice operate? That sort of really amplifies the value of using Lumiant? What does that look like?
Mark Akeroyd
Yeah, so part of this is a function of the way that we work with practices that that by us as well. So one of the first things that we do, our customer success team, when someone purchases Lumina is we sit down with them and go great, you obviously saw some value in it. Tell me a bit about your client experience as it stands now. Yeah. When we when you go through your introduction, phase discovery, strategy, console, advice, presentation, implementation, progress, you know, all of those experiences, tell me how it works, right now, the question we then go and ask is, how do you want your client to feel during all of those? And that’s the key question when it comes to experiences. And as we, you know, as we gradually map all of that out, there sort of intent through each phase, how they want the client to feel what they do right now. So and therefore what they’re not willing to give up. You know, some people swear by their risk profile, or whatever, that might be fine. Cool, I want to replace it, man. That’s, that’s sweet. So whatever they want to hold you, then we go and, okay, great. Here’s where we think we can add to that experience intent with our values module, or our life module, or if not use the life values goals module here, we might use our investment preferences module over in this phase, you might use our best life modeling tool over in this phase, and then when it comes to your progress meeting experience might do this, and we match it back to you. So that’s a long way of saying once we’ve done that work, the practices that that use us really well. Stick to process. Yeah, really simply. Now, that is a function of a ton of work, right? So the ton of work, I could summarize really simply in that, when they do that mapping of the ideal experience, they’ve got the right people in the room, we typically try to speak to the decision maker, you know, whether that be the principal, or the business owner, that change champion, that’s usually the person whose voice carries it could be, you know, an elder statesman of the of the, of the business, you know,
Peita Diamantidis
might even be a senior admin sometimes like it just direct for the dynamic.
Mark Akeroyd
Absolutely. And then your your ops champion, right, the person that’s going to make sure that the cogs in the machine are always turning, and if they’re in the room, and they’re cohesive, then we know that that practice has a far better chance of success. Yeah. Because your ops champion makes made sure that it’s all in the templates, right? Right. Your your your change champion, who’s that elder states person, whether that be an advisor, or a senior admin person, will make sure everyone feels supported, will will back up the tech when no doubt something probably goes wrong in your first values conversation, because it’s awkward and weird. But they’ll back it up and go keep going. Right? I did it. I failed. I was okay. Yeah. And your decision makers, the one that pays the bills, right? So they keep paying the bills and keep the tech there that, you know, they’re committed to the cause? Because, yeah, whether it be Lumia, whether it be a student wheel, raw debt, whatever. When you make these choices, you’ve got to, you’ve got to design the experience. So design the intent, implement it, stick with it, you know, right.
Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s some there’s sort of a layer there also of letting it sit, like, do it and let it sit, wait and see what happens. Because, look, it’s very rare. There are there are a handful of instances. But it’s very rare when you implement something like this, if any type, any tech, any change to user experience, where you instantly get every client saying that was the best thing, that thing ever your hero, like it just doesn’t work that way, right? You get you start seeing change, you start seeing, I mean, it could be a change in morale of the team. Like there’s all sorts of things that you can start to watch, because they’re like, Wow, this is cool. I’m really enjoying that. And I mean, to that point, you know, is there you know, you could almost start with the values discussion being done between team members, one team member doing it with another team member because they’ll probably surprise each other. You know,
Mark Akeroyd
yeah, one of the exercises that we give to our new clients is we call it a looming and date night, effectively like a 15 step guide to like our life discussion around the eight dimensions of well being our values discussion and setting goals. You can do it with a business partner, you can do it with, with your your own partner at home, because we know these are conversations that people don’t have themselves let alone as the advisor and you know, we call it a date night because we encourage you maybe crack a bottle of wine, right maybe, maybe put a fire on and and you sit down with your significant other x into it big, because it is different. And we’re cool with that you should be cool with that. Hang on.
Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And it’s, it’s such an interesting thing when you talk, I mean, goals based advice, you know, is such a dry name, while we’re talking about, but it’s much more than that. But I think the assumption, the error we make when we talk about advice that way is assuming people know what they want, or can enunciate it. And they may know deep down. But most people can’t just run it off in what I want to do is in two years, I want to do this for years, I want to do that. And then when, in fact, those people have probably already seen an advisor because they just really well organized and structured. So, you know, we discovered as we have these conversations, I had one couple, lovely young couple, and they’re actually more self aware than most, you know, they’re trying to, they’ve been doing Barefoot Investor, like they’re really trying to get on top of things. Right. Awesome and proactive. I love that stuff. And what was interesting is, she admitted that down the track, and of course, you know, I’ve turned 50 This year, and she’s approaching that sort of Andrei downer track, she’d love to get a job she didn’t have to think about. So she’s been driven and focused, and said, You know, I’d love to give it get a job, then that could be four days, I could turn up, they would love it, you know, I’d add value, but it just didn’t really text me or feel stressful. And that completely stunned her partner. Yeah, never have that. She’s never mentioned that she’s but because it took time to get to that point, you know, that level of safety, of being willing to just throw things like, hey, you know, what about this? Is that possible? Because part of what we’re trying to break through here is people’s assumptions about what they can do. Right, and you’ve got to unshackle them. Yeah.
Mark Akeroyd
Correct. Two quick anecdotes on that, you know, the first one little client story? Yeah, one of my favorite ones is akin to what you just said, where the, the couple haven’t had these types of conversations before northern beaches of Sydney, quite a, you know, quite a nice house, as you could imagine. And they picked the Values card, I want to live in a better place. Right. And, and, you know, we train advisors and the system helps them go, Okay, why, why is that one important to you? non financial spouse goes first. Why is that one important you financial spouse? And we deliberately do that, FYI, because typically, the non financial spouse doesn’t get a voice. So we give them the voice first. Yeah. And I could go on why we do that? For all some reasons. But yes, so they had this conversation, right, based on that framework. And it turns out their goal where they thought coming in was they wanted to renovate their house, which would have cost them I think, close to 500,000 bucks, northern beaches of Sydney. But actually, what when they really talked about what living in a better place meant to them, they actually wanted to escape it all get into a smaller place and downsize. We’re talking like a million dollar swing. Just because I haven’t had the chance. Like, I thought you wanted to rent out? No, I thought you wanted to run out into the spider man, me, pointing at each other. Yeah. So that’s number one. And number two, to your point around, we try to put everything in this nice box and understand why we do this, you know, nomenclatures, important values based advice, goals based advice, life coaching, yeah, holistic financial aid, whatever it is, whatever helps us feel convicted, I think is the term that makes the most sense. But the little spanner in the works that are thrown through watching people do this and through some of the conversations I have with behavioral scientists over here, in the US, I’ve been lucky enough to Hong Kong with a couple of them is that we also assume that the client not only knows their goals, but he’s presenting their authentic self. And I only, I only had this for the first time when I moved over here, and I was talking to someone about it. And he was like, you’ve got to assume or you’ve got to think that client could be putting on a persona, because they assume the financial advisor needs them to know about money needs to know about and needs them to have their stuff in order needs them to be able to articulate what’s happening on Wall Street. So they go and study up but yeah, I got everything, you know, that’s fine. That’s fine.
Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah, it’s really true. And, and in fact, I think you could safely assume nobody you’re seeing is representing early on is representing their authentic self because Absolutely not, we’re taught not to and it’s a natural defense mechanism, right. It’s it to protect yourself and so we sort of don’t share all of ourselves. Unfortunately, though, there’s and this would happen as as you get older, particularly, is we sort of learned to almost, you know, sort of cut off all of those edges we sort of take it you know, and get a bit to sanitize the normal and the same as everybody else and take on the conditioning messages we get and all you should retire then and you know, all these things we absorb and it’s only in our unconscious reactions that you know, some of that authenticity comes out I’ve I’ve experienced that actually, when we my husband I traveled soon after I got purple streaks in my hair, right? So redhead and bright purple streaks. And what’s interesting about that is I can’t tell you how many people comment on it. Like, we’ll just you’ll be standing at the lights and like, cool. I really liked the purple streaks, like, what the hill like, to me. That’s a strange thing to do. And I went back and I just mentioned it to my hairdresser. And I said, I just think that’s really weird. Like, why would they call me stupid, you didn’t understand that person secretly wished they had enough guts to do that. That’s what they’re actually saying. You know, and subconsciously, it was just a lovely compliment. And, you know, yay them for saying it. It’s lovely. But actually, what what I was saying is, I wish I could do that. Right. And so, you know, that’s true of all sorts of stuff, I wish I could quit my job and go and, you know, move overseas and start a different career or I would like, then it’s going to take time for you to get to that truth. For people, they’re just not going to share it initially. So you do need a process to help them both trust you enough, but also unlock that for them. Right? They’re not trying to resist, that’s just natural.
Mark Akeroyd
Absolutely. Peita, you know, a bit of a bit of stat chat for those that like the numbers, right? So over here, there’s a planning software and modeling software called Money guide Pro, if you’re, if you’re familiar with it, has about a third of the American markets. And 100 130 140,000 advisors use it. They, on average, in their modeling plans have one and a half goals per client. Oh, right. And when you go down that next level further, it’s retirement. And sometimes the second goal is save for college, save for kids college. Very American goal. Sure. But that said, one and a half. I can’t help but think there’s a bit more to life.
Peita Diamantidis
Right all the years between now and retirement.
Mark Akeroyd
And you know, I, you know, I think about my days, back at my previous role, and you know, you’d see plans and everyone wants to retire at 65 on $53,000 per year, which might absolutely be a goal. I’m not naughty, not totally. But I come back to I reckon there’s a little bit more going on.
Peita Diamantidis
And in fact, when you look at the people that each of us might be envious of like, we’d look and we go, wow, that’s fantastic. They’re doing that I’m envious of it. It’s often in our heads, how the hell did they pull that off? Absolutely. Do they managed to do that? And that’s a planning exercise. And I don’t mean that in advice. It’s I just mean, they’re good at planning and getting it done. You know, they don’t wonder why.
Mark Akeroyd
Yeah, I also think there’s, and, you know, I think there’s an element where the advisors got to be happy and willing and able to sit in the mess. Because if you do, if you do take the assumption that that there’s a bit more to life than one and a half goals per client, then then you’ve you’ve sort of got to ask the questions to see what’s more than the one and a half. And be willing to accept wherever that conversation goes, you know, whether it be fear of regulation and fear of compliance, we’re trying to get it to that retire at age 65, and 52. Because I know that that’s going to pass the sniff test, whether it’s because I actually don’t know what how to what to say to someone, if they say, I really want to, I really want to quit my job. And you’re not you need to keep working because otherwise you can’t do the other things, whatever that might be. Yeah, like, you’ve actually just got to be okay with that. And I say that is a really tough skill. And a lot of the coaching that we end up having to do with a lot of advisors is to call you don’t need to solve the problem, but you absolutely need to have the conversation.
Peita Diamantidis
Definitely. And I mean, we’ve I’ve even started doing because we’ve been doing more of this sort of cash flow conversation, which is different, such a different game. Although people still have that little understanding, you know, I mean, they they know that little about caches, they do about Super and only some of the things. So in that sense, it’s quite similar. It’s been what I’ve started doing is as as and we do a bit of a brainstorming exercise for all of the let’s call it a wish list, but all that sort of stuff. And then I get them to pick a few and I intentionally get them to pick some really way out there. There’s no chance in hell options, right? Maybe one per spouse. And then I actually go away and model all of it. Like it could all happen. And variably with a little bit of forethought. It’s all possible. Yeah, invariably, and the stunned silence when you show them that some thinking now and behavior now and you stick to some of that then all those things you mentioned, you could do here see I’ve got a little app for you do this here. You do this here. You take your sabbatical, then you do things like are you serious? Yeah, I’m serious. And what’s interesting is it’s very hard to anchor behavior for a future self it’s we’re not very good to our future self but well horrible connecting with ourselves. What hopeless but when you can see all of that possibility, suddenly spending a little less on some silly stuff now seems like a great trade off. Because it’s like, are you serious? Like, yeah, absolutely. I can do. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Mark Akeroyd
Yeah. Brendan Fraser, who, you know, is quite big in his work. Yeah. Right. I think your audience would probably know him quite well. But he calls it connecting planning to purpose. Yes. Right. And I think that’s, I think that’s the game. Because at the end of the day, unfortunately, unless someone has figured this out, if they have called me, you can’t be with your client every minute of every day, when they’re making decisions around their life and their money. No. So you have to, you have to do some sort of coaching, behavioral change, set up structures, whatever it is, whatever rails inspire them to make change, or whatever your chosen method of behavior change might be, to give them every opportunity to do that, an invitation to dream, like you said, is huge. And the role of permission is massive. The two things at play and just that example. And, you know, you can, you can certainly find smart tech and and smart experiences to do that. You can
Peita Diamantidis
and I think you know, there is a bit of EQ or behavioral science, you’ve got to start to get your head around. And I’m still doing a lot of reading on this to try and get get there. But certainly, it’ll be ever evolving, right? Because it’s, you know, it’s the human brain. So Kevin, help us. One of the things I have noticed in terms of the way that I’ve started behaving with these types of clients is they sort of the initial division is whether they have a scarcity mindset, or an abundance mindset, and I, you know, behave different scarcity, I’m gonna have to convince them to do stuff like this is I’m gonna have to drag it out of them, they’re going to need to see all that potential. And then, Yep, great, we’ll start to loosen the purse strings a bit, and we’ll start to enjoy life, whereas the abundance, it was like, Okay, that’s great. But let’s actually work out if you care about all those things that you want to do. It’s a different and once I’ve sort of, and I’ll use language early on, that will start to flag that, like, you really get a sense. Yeah. And I think once I’ve done that, then it’s sort of almost like two funnels, you know, they’re two different funnels and two different things you’ll do for them. And of course, there’s nuance on that, but, but I think, yeah, the, and that’s where I love that, you know, with education now in Australia, and what we’re required to do, that behavioral finance is now part of that, because it can make a huge difference, you know, the extent to which we understand some of that, and really tap into it for the consumer. Now talk to me about the clients access. So we’ve got Lumiant, and the advisors doing wonderful things. We’ve got this great experience, from the clients perspective, what are there? So there’s the one off maybe values, discussions, some, some survey style things? What else is the interaction for the client? Like, what does that involve? Potentially?
Mark Akeroyd
Yeah, it’s a great question. Right now, wheelhouse, so go with me as I talk you through it. So we like to think and part of that problem that we’re trying to solve right is, is how do we obviously get clients to engage with their advice, so we’re trying to figure it out. As with everyone. We like to think of Lumiant and the environment that we’ve created is the place where advisors and clients can call home. And what we mean by that is these suite of tools and exercises that we’ve built, whether it be our your life survey that helps you assess your fulfilment across eight dimensions of well being, whether it be the values conversation that helps you pick your top five values to have a conversation around what’s important to you, whether it be our goals module that you can use classes to do doing done, get really tangible, move it into the Done column and put images on it. So it becomes a big vision board, whether it be our best life Monte Carlo model, modeling tool that tells you if you’re on track off track, or overfunded, and therefore going to die original leverage, will there be any one of those modules and the six others that we’ve got and soon to be a couple of more, we’ve designed them in a way where the adviser takes the client through them, but the client ends up inheriting them as the platform that they log back into, right? So everything that they’ve done with their advisor is building out the platform or the portal if you want to use that language, that they end up logging back into, that they see these the areas of wellbeing important to me, these are the values important to me, these are the goals we discussed. This is the modeling scenario we’re working towards. These are the key advice areas that my planner has recommended that they’re working on with me. These are the tasks that I have to go do these are my investment preferences and why I felt that way. And here’s all my documents in my beautiful vault and soon to be here’s how my net worth is tracking over time. They can log back in right and once we’ve got that data, we can nudge them around it, we can do all those sorts of cool. So why that’s super important for us is that we believe one of the key reasons clients don’t engage with their advice is they’re not part of the process. Yep. And they’re not part of the experience. Yeah, right. You know,
Peita Diamantidis
why are almost a victim of it, aren’t they? Oh,
Mark Akeroyd
man, you know, I’ve spoken I’ve spoken before and the the pros and cons of the dreaded whiteboard. Right. But like, if you think about the old whiteboarding experience, and nothing against the whiteboard, I think use well, they’re great educational tools, but not used. Well, it’s an advisor with their back turned writing something up on the board, and then turning back and explaining it and, you know, sort of parent child or teacher student relationship. Yeah. So there’s a power imbalance, right? And not everyone learns that way. Yeah, some people learn visually, some people learn audit audibly. Some people learn kinesthetically and need to get hands on. So you know, with all these tools, even say, our best life Monte Carlo simulator. Clients can get back in and have a bit of a play. Right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, we’ve got to make sure they don’t mess up the scenario that we’re working with, and that’s fine. But getting them engaged is not a bad thing. Because if you majority of people, kinesthetic learners and visual learners, right, yeah. And if we can give them experiences that are sort of largely there, you know, we’re taking a punt that we get the majority of people.
Peita Diamantidis
Right, right. Absolutely. And, and it’s, it’s such an interesting thing, too, because, um, and I hesitate to say this, because every tool has it. And this is not a judgement at all. But no, most people don’t understand graphs. It’s just a fact. Yeah, most people in the public don’t understand graphs. And yet, the height of communication from Financial Services is a graph. That’s when we’re really like ninja level communicators. Oh, my God, and I get why, because to us, that’s making tangible the numbers, right. So that’s us translating the numbers and I, and it’s a step in the right direction without a doubt. But I think I’m, I’m excited about a future where you were talking about having, you know, the, the goal and and, you know, being getting done or, you know, that sort of stuff, I’m excited about a future that could involve, you know, a virtual reality experience where the future is a bit hazy. And then as they tweak the different things, the actions they take, then the Harley Davidson becomes more real and vivid to them in the future, and the, you know, the moving to France becomes, so they can visually see the impact of what their life story will become, based on the actions and the numbers are behind it. But we’re not demonstrating that through a graph, we’re demonstrating it visually, truly, visually, you know, visually,
Mark Akeroyd
I agree. So we come up with we encountered this problem within our best life Monte Carlo modeling tool all the time, right. And I can’t remember if this is going to be video or not, but for those listening, you know, when when Peita was talking about graphs, I actively put my head in my hands, because I’m dealing with it at the moment in product design around this. Yeah, we’re revamping this model. And I know I need a graph. I know, I know, our advisors are going to want to how do I do it in the most client friendly way? And here’s how we’re thinking about it right? I’ll lift, lift, lift up the covers. When I think about modeling, and when I think about how I want a client to feel right. I want the client to feel engaged, empowered, that they know, at a glance if it’s working, right, are they on track? Are they off track? Are they overfunded? Right, are they actually too scarce in their mindset, right, and can do a little bit more? And do they know what the action is that they need to take? Yes. So if I think about that’s how I want clients to feel when they’re working through this tool with their, their advisor, then we structure we structure that experience deliberately from a visual hierarchy perspective. When we’re designing it, the first thing that they say is a traffic light system. That red Amber green, red, I’m off track. So go talk to your advisor. Yeah, you don’t want it you guys. Yeah, correct. Green on track. sweetspot. All good. Keep doing what you’re doing. Amber, you’re overfunded? Right, bad. If your goal is to die with a mattress stuffed full of money, sick, you’re on track. But if your goal is to live a rich life, one that is filled with memories and experiences with the loved ones, hey, go speak to your advisor, I need to do a little bit more. Yeah, so that’s right at the top. The next question is if I’m on track off track, to what? So we we playback their goals straight underneath it. These are the goals along the timeline that you said were important to you. So are you on track off track to those then we get into the graph? Yeah. And we do that deliberately because here’s the thing we know financial spouses and advisors will scroll down. They want to go to the graph they’ll have the numbers. In fact, we even enable it where they can get to the spreadsheet behind the graft if they want. Yep. Get it people a spreadsheet people, I get it. But for the non financial spouse, which we think is the majority of people, you talk to her enough. Yes. Talk to her more than enough. And that’s the empowering experience. I won’t because if you if you if you start with the other stuff, I’m disengaged, I feel like I’m being spoken down to it. If I don’t understand I’m not going to do so simple as Oh,
Peita Diamantidis
and and, you know, it’s, it’s so important to remember this is their life. I mean, when you look at a lot of what goes on in advice, or even a commentary around, I mean, we’re obsessed with retirement and super right in this country. And the shame of that is there’s so much living, I mean, for myself, I mean, we, our retirement won’t be real for until probably we’re 70 at least and to be honest, I’m not convinced retirement will actually exist the way it does. Now, I think it’s all going to evolve to something far more fluid. Right? And and you know, you’ll go from one hour to one day a week working to five days down to no days to Peita,
Mark Akeroyd
I heard a great term since moved out. It’s called a victory lap. victory lap retirement Have you heard this? So actually, there’s two terms glide path and victory lap, your glide path is like, I’m five years out, I’m just going to cruise on down. So rather than retire at 65, I might retire at 70. Because those last five years, I’m just going to cruise. Yes. And then at 70, I’m going to have one year of a victory lap, just cruising at work, saying goodbye to everyone. Taken all my long service taken all my annual leave, do it during my holidays on the company dime, and then go out, go out on my victory lap, then go into retirement.
Peita Diamantidis
Nice. Nice, I like it. And the thing is all of it’s, it’s just not the the date, you know, the artwork that I mean, it used to literally be a date, like it would be, you know, the 23rd of August in 1984. We literally was just not going to be that anymore. And so, and how bizarre that we spend so much time focusing on that stage of life without focusing on what’s going on now. And what happens in between now and then. It’s truly bizarre, and you’ve only got to have somebody in your extended network pass away young. And suddenly that seems somewhat idiotic, to be honest, it seems irresponsible not to at least provide some insights into into, you know, the now and the period up to retirement because who knows what’s going to happen? Yeah, you know, living is important. Totally. For sure. It’s an it’s an interesting all of this is, it’s so innate. And when we all sort of nod a lot when like, of course, I think the challenge then for advisors is, you know, we’re talking about a utopia here in terms of a service. And it’s going from where they are now to to that utopia. And one of the things they’re going to have to handle is the other tech that they’re using. And it might be mandated by a dealer group or, you know, all that sort of thing. How do you guys how have you approached integration? With tools? Yeah,
Mark Akeroyd
yeah. So we got a couple that a live and most used within Australia, obviously been Salesforce and x plan. Yep. If you’re gonna start anywhere, as a FinTech, they’re probably the right places to start. And, you know, we’re actively working with a couple investment platforms that we’ll have done relatively soon. And probably the way that I sort of talk through integrations, the way that we think through integrations is what role do we want them to play within the Lumiant? Advice, experience? And yes, all this wonderful stuff that we’ve spoken about, we sort of sit back and go, right, if this is the ideal end to end looming experience, if I was a user using every module in order as designed, where do I need the most help? Well, I need a plug into a CRM, because I’m not going to live in Lumia every minute of every day, and I’ve still got, you know, so service delivery, I’ve got to do I’ve still got a follow up call that I’ve got. So my CRM tells me that Yep. So that’s cool. I’ve still got to produce advice, hence x plan. And you know, it whilst we talk about this beautiful utopia of what my life needs to look like, I still need the gas in the tank to drive the car to the towards and that’s my investments. Yeah, that’s my investments. Right? So okay, let’s let’s get some investment platform some of the most common ones within Australia and get them fading in so that we can get live updates so that I can have the picture of my life I can have a sort of almost live factfinder experience with with data aggregation three, oh, we’ve got Yoda Lee as well. So data aggregation, three otally. I can sort of get my net worth ongoing through my investment platform is being updated all the time. And I can see everything as close as close as possible in real time. So that’s how we’re sort of thinking through the integration. case and how I’d urge advisors listening to this to think through their integration piece, like really sit back and go my end and experience. What tech do I need to play? What role and do they talk? And do they speak? integrations are important, no doubt. But that won’t be the differentiator between your experience
Peita Diamantidis
won’t do not. And I completely agree. And I think I see a lot people talk, oh, we want the all in one or we, you know, we want it to all integrate with everything, it doesn’t need to, they certainly need to run well in parallel, so that you certainly can’t have one sort of mess up what’s going on in the other because of, but that’s bad process design, generally, it’s less about the technical, it’s more about the process, I find. And I think we underrate the human API, you know, the use of, of a team member being the interface, sometimes that’s actually a great thing, because that’s the some, you know, systems can’t use apply EQ. And sometimes that’s what’s going to be required in between the two things, you know, sometimes it’s all that’s got triggered, do we need to, you know, flag that in the other system or not? Like, it requires that sort of logic? It’s more than logic, it’s the EQ. So I’m with you. I think integration is important, just from a user experience, if there’s double handling, you know, client data, you know, entering things twice sort of stuffed, for sure. But I do think we overcook it sometimes what we’re looking for,
Mark Akeroyd
I agree with you, Peita. Yeah. He’s me proving as a fanboy, right. I’d said this, too, when when we bought the podcast, and I remember hearing you speak at the less talk and more action conference down in St. Kilda would have been four or five years ago, renovation before automation, spoke about micro processes. And you know, the questions you must ask when you get down to micro process processes, can tech do it? Can I do it? Can someone do it? That’s cheaper than May? Yeah, I still think those questions exist. Yes. And reasonable. wisetech? No,
Peita Diamantidis
no. And in fact, you could expend a whole lot of energy to make it be done by tech. And it ended up being a crappy experience.
Mark Akeroyd
I remember having this conversation at work maybe a few years ago. I’m okay with spreadsheets. Right. Right. But I’m not great at them. And I remember the analyst I was working with at the time in the project watched me, we’re on a zoom screenshare. Watch me go through a spreadsheet and sorts of data. And it was like, maybe you could cut out about 15 steps. And I was like, Yeah, but like, I got there in five minutes. I’m happy with five minutes. That’s fine. With that? Yeah. Yeah, no, yeah. No, I’m not that busy. Where you write for four minutes 32. Back in my pocket will make a huge difference.
Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, correct. Correct. And it’s working out where it does. And in fact, often, where, like you say, we’re looking for efficiency in the wrong place. You know, so I mean, I’m, I’m always wary of outsourcing data collection. So in terms of making a client enter a whole lot of information, I think it can work. But that’s got to be inexperienced to you know, so it’s all but it saves me time. Yeah. But your poor client has got to reenter 400 fields, like, really good customer experience, you know. So I think that’s the challenge when we focus too much on on efficiency and don’t sort of have as our foundation, that consumer experience because it goes
Mark Akeroyd
back to where you see your value lie, right? And where you where you see the most value because Okay, to go back on the statement, I just said four and a half minutes is important to me. If I could get that back, but I’ll tell you where I wouldn’t apply it learning a spreadsheet know. Exactly. Exactly.
Peita Diamantidis
You were doing that same thing, 20 times a day for five days a week. For an exercise.
Mark Akeroyd
Exactly right. I just had to get in get out of a spreadsheet. But yeah. Yeah. If it was a Slack hack, where I mean that four hours of the day communicating with our dev team.
Peita Diamantidis
To workflows, we we use Slack workflows all the time in the business, because it can make a huge difference to the time. Yeah, I’m with you. It’s where is the magic? Right? Where’s the magic? If you’re gonna add the most value to me? Yeah, for sure. Now, in terms of then your current users, and they’ve all you know, got wrinkly fingers from being immersed in Lumiant and really getting excited about it, then, you know, is there elements though, that you’ve you guys have been surprised that people haven’t gone further and really taken advantage of is there sort of any of those hidden gems that are, you know, even even more value that could be unlocked?
Speaker 2
Yeah. I’m going to cite a really good example that I heard as simple as last night, as recent as last night, sorry, I was talking to our innovation hub, who were a suite of power users. And that we go to, to sort of bounce around Deal’s off, hear what’s going on in the industry and sort of Katie’s our way of thinking about things. They also give us access to their clients to test things, which is great. forever grateful for those guys shout out, one of them spoke to me yesterday and said, Hey, I actually think there’s value in aligning someone’s expenses to their values. And here’s how I’m doing it. And I was like, we haven’t even thought of that. That’s amazing. And it’s not within our product. I mean, we give you the five values, you get that but like aligning their expenses to that so that they can have a conversation around. You know, are you spending in line with your values? Crikey. So I share that example, because there’s tons of features within our product. But to go back to a point you made earlier, a lot of it is how are you thinking about it for the experience proposition you’ve got? Right. So that’s one where someone really surprised me, the one that I’m I’m actively working on right now, and that I think we can get heaps more value is we’ve got great metrics and great data in our platform. So you know, you know, your clients, top areas of well being they want to work on, you know, their top five values, you know, their wellbeing score, you know, their progress to values, you know, the progress, the strategy, you know, they’re 86%, on track to heal. We’ve got tons of metrics, I think we can use that really, really well. And people could use it right now. Because you can track those things over time. To your point, it’s a graph that goes up or goes down. But I think we use it to the power that it could be, which is gamifying, the experience setting challenges, thinking about next best actions, and everyone would go is that AI? Maybe but but also like, whatever humans could humans can figure that out. Top areas of well being social, so I want to spend more time with their friends. And their top value is dedicate more time to those that I love. Like, yeah, I reckon the answer is pretty obvious if you work with. So I think there’s something in there around how we connect all that data together in a way that makes it super obvious for people and yet gamma fires the experience to go based on everything that’s in here. Here’s where we think you need to be.
Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And in terms of, then you’re sort of talking about what you’ve been working on, there’s probably some things that that are coming up on the development part, maybe some of them, sometimes some of those are, you know, a bit dull, but necessary. And others are exciting stuff. I’m keen to hear about those. But I’m also sort of keen to hear about the blue sky, you know, so where, where’s Lumiant? Heading? And what might be down the track if you guys can sort of pull it off?
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. Okay. There’s a few that I’m super proud of. So I’ll try and go through this really quick. We’re about to launch our net worth module, which takes all our fact find information all our live feeds and puts it together in a way to track net worth over time, not just across your investment platform, but all your assets. Now, there might be people in the audience going hypocrisy that’s about numbers. You’re all about values. We recognize there’s quant data you need and qual data you need. Yeah, it seems to be the the most needs to headline to headline, right. So we’ve got that we think that’s ticket to the game stuff. Pretty proud about that. Yeah. We’re revamping our best life modeling tool. Super excited about that one, why am I so excited about it? We’ve had it live for about a year. Now, what we’ve observed is, it’s pretty simple. It could be simpler, it could be much more engaging. And we think we found some cool ways to do that. Spoiler alert, we think it’s about getting different views for different types of clients. So really simple views for simple clients, more advanced views for advanced clients, more sophisticated views for sophisticated clients. Yeah. And having you dictate that experience and giving them a call sliders and toggles that use all the data in there and all that all that super excited about that. You know, we’re thinking mobile. You know, we’re actively working on that. You can’t be an advice engagement platform where and not engage people in probably the most use device in their life. Yeah. Once again, yeah, I’m no genius. It just makes sense.
Peita Diamantidis
And look, phone, my phone notifications are, I think, an untapped communication technique, particularly for a nudge if you just want, I just need you to do this little thing.
Speaker 2
Yeah, we think we got a pretty complete, we got a pretty complete data set to do that. Because it’s not just money, but we’ve got your strategies, we’ve got your values, you’ve got areas of wellbeing and new goals. And it’s all supported by a process where you sort of felt included so you’re not just getting nudged by some machine, you’re actually getting nudged being like I remember the chat that I had about that. Yeah. Which eludes me Get a blue sky. I mean, we’ve kicked around this. And I feel like every tech provider be kicking around AI. But But I’ll tell you how we’re thinking about it. Because I think that’s where blue sky is, yeah. Let me tell you the problem I see with it, and then how we’re thinking through it. So the problem I see with AI is financial planning is fundamentally human. And to get behavior change, you need to recognize the human. And one thing that AI will never be able to do is recognize that if you ask a question, someone’s actively silent, someone’s crying, someone has pulled a word, someone is leaning forward, the other person’s leaning back, you will never get that. So, you know, we need to recognize that that human experience needs to exist. However, if you can have that human experience and feed that data into into an engine, that doesn’t just recognize what you fit in about that client, but how you’ve helped all your clients. Yep. And finds trends patterns around that maybe even compares that around people’s well being and values that are within a broader dataset. Yep. And helps you with the people like you. type experience. Yeah. I think there’s something in there for that, because of connecting the human to the data set to the nudge. Yeah. Now, the reality is Apple could do this tomorrow. Right. But where I think the key difference is Apple hasn’t had a values conversation with you. All your data? Yes, absolutely. I think the delivery of those two nudges are completely different. If you’ve had a human experience before you get it,
Peita Diamantidis
definitely without a doubt. And I think you know, the power, or the good power of AI will be the quality of the information it’s looking at. And absolutely. And that’s where if it’s within an environment that’s got, like you say, the values and a list of things from the client base that say that advisor is looking at or whatever it might be, then the quality of the data is better than just the great, unwashed. And then you get, oh, well of the all of that, right? It can be it’s because I think AI we see as this faceless big being, it can be as big or as small as we like we define that, you know, of what it’s looking at and what it absorbs information from so I guess that’s where the power will sit is how
Speaker 2
I think, you know, the other data set that’s often not spoken about that I think is just as important as the client data set is you as the as the advisor. So yeah, take the same data set. If we were to nudge it needs to feel like something that Peita D would do with our clients. Right? Not what Lumiant would do with that client. Exactly. Because you actually do things a little bit different to mark Ackroyd. And you know, that other advisor down the road. And and similarly, that’s why we think your dataset matters to do that as well. Because if it was just how Lumia would do it, I think people would sort of sniff through that pretty quick.
Peita Diamantidis
Well, no, it would become, it would become to average, in that it would have too many too many people’s views, which just means you get the generic. And it’ll be it’ll be really exciting for an advisor who really sort of does narrow down who they’re serving, because, you know, let’s imagine it’s I don’t know, there might be an advisor that starts a business that looks after people who want to run marathons globally, like it’s this thing that they want to do. Then the dad like there’ll be real themes in that. The way they spend the way they save what they spend it on their health fair, like they’ll they’ll start to be some real themes. And so that’s when AI can get really clever is there will be some some things that can represent or feed like you say natural feedback, because the people you’re talking to also have some some consistencies and sort of, like a theme to their community. That gets exciting.
Mark Akeroyd
Yeah. Yeah, we’re, we’re super excited by that future. And you were humble, humble enough to know that with with that sort of power comes responsibility, and we can’t lose sight of the human at the end of it, whether that be the client or the advisor and, and that’s certainly what we’re pouring effort into right now. How do we help our humans deliver great human centric experiences?
Peita Diamantidis
Absolutely. And look, I think the other thing that’s interesting is something we don’t do currently is well, advisors or sorry, advice practices, or even financial services generally don’t don’t normally have a community that talks amongst itself. Right. So much like ensemble, these ensemble exists. And it’s not that we all talk to em all the time, although we all love talking to him. Shout out to him in getting him Sunday emails, right, right. So so we all love that, but actually, it’s the it’s the conversations amongst the community that feeds it. And what some listeners might not know is there’s an AI that sort of looking for themes Say, what are the questions that advisors are asking all the time? What are the things that are frustrating them? What? Now, if we can try and build that for a community of clients, then you can solve the problems they don’t even realize they have. Because it’ll be what they’re talking about. And what they they’re all girl. Yeah, that frustrates me too. And, you know, whatever that might be, we can start to just, you know, really, they’ll, they’ll think that we live in their pocket, they’ll be like, Oh, my goodness, I didn’t even know I realized that. But what a relief that you’ve providing that service. Now. I think there’s some genius there for AI in that sense, as well, is really listening, you know, listening to what the consumer is experiencing, so that we can, you know, do better and provide some more sort of unusual, perhaps, but innovative solutions. Yeah. Super exciting. Is there anything we’ve missed?
Mark Akeroyd
Probably, probably, always. Look, you know, if we keep talking about our Lumia roadmap, something we’re really excited to bring to Australia that you might have seen in the news. Recently, we acquired a company here in America called genericity, who, whose flagship product, Halo. health and longevity optimizer, is something we’re super excited to bring in the US that I don’t know if you know this, but the leading cause of bankruptcy post retirement is healthcare. Because yeah, sharp healthcare system isn’t as good as we’ve got back. But what what the what the what this tool does and why we’re so excited about it is it reads, hereditary, social and lifestyle factors, helps give you a more accurate sense of longevity. The years you’ll have active and retirement, the years that you’ll need to be in extended care the cost of said years, and allows you to toggle on or off lifestyle choices that you can make now that might impact or extend those. Yep. Now, as I explained that, you’ll probably realize why we’re so excited about it. Because if you can connect financial data and financial information, and trade offs around that to health and lifestyle, trade offs, all aligned to your values, we think that’s a pretty holistic picture. And we think your clients can become truly healthy, wealthy and wise. So yeah, I’d probably probably kick myself we didn’t speak about that is, you know, something that we’ve got here in the US that we’re, we’re actively looking to bring bring over and I was so little bit of a sweetener for the audience to keep an eye up.
Peita Diamantidis
Absolutely. And that’s exciting from a sense that, like, longevity is a risk we’ll talk about, but it’s something that’s not easy to make tangible for an individual. You know, it just feels like once again, it’s the average, Oh, it’ll be about this. Here, we factor that in to make it more personal today. And to that end of it individual, what a difference that can make.
Mark Akeroyd
No life is average. It’s it’s,
Peita Diamantidis
it’s simply not. In fact, you’re right. None of them are half of them are a you know, above that, and half of them are below so
Mark Akeroyd
I’m not a rocket scientist. But I think that’s how average is
Peita Diamantidis
exactly right. It’s crazy. Well, all right, advice, explorers. If you’d like to find out more about Lumiant, then the website link is in the episode show notes along with Mark’s LinkedIn details. So I’m sure he will then point you toward the right people to engage with and get a demo. Thank you so much for joining me on the show here today. I’ve loved this conversation. And I’m actually quietly excited to see how Lumiant and where it goes to help us engage even deeper with our clients.
Mark Akeroyd
Peita, thank you so much for having me, this has been an absolute wild ride, I can chat about this with you for hours. And I look forward to chatting with you about this for Alyss as our relationship progresses and mixed. All the best to everyone out there. So so thank you so much for having me.
Peita Diamantidis
Well, thank you for sticking with with us, folks. I know that was a longer episode than normal. But you know, what a fascinating individual. And also, you know, concepts, I think that we can all start to really open our minds about the way we engage with our clients and the experience that we build for them. I’d love to know if you’re a user of Lumia. And if you’ve embedded that in your practice, so please head over to the ensemble community platform and share your insights, you know, what worked, what haven’t what hasn’t worked any of those elements, you know, please share them. And if there’s some magical wonderful thing that that surprised you or that that surprised a client, you know, got a great reaction out of them, then we all would love to hear for any of the tech we talk about, you know, all of those stories of fantastic to give us context about whether it might apply to us. Now, as for my thoughts, I think, you know, and we mentioned during the conversation they saw that’s wonderful, you know, this is this advice, experience utopia. And while that can be exciting, I think it can also be really overwhelming, right? And we can just go Oh, for goodness sake. You know, I’ve got my five step advice process How the hell am I gonna go from that to this this huge Opia and, you know, I’m right there with you, we’re literally going through that in our business and trying to work out how we constantly deliver that next level of experience. And I guess, if you’ve just not really gone down this path before, but you’re keen to start, then one of the things I just get you to do is get you and your team together. Awesome. Some colleagues, you could even just, you know, head over to, to somebody’s meeting room, give it a few hours. And and what I’d love you to do is brainstorm all the things you love about the what the the experience you provide your clients currently, what do you love? What do you think, just is awesome? What do they think is awesome, you know, brainstorm all of that there’s going to be on one side of the whiteboard. And then on the other side, what do you hate? Like, oh, that’s awful. And, you know, what do you think the clients hate or are indifferent to even, whatever, and we’ll do it if you tell us to. So brainstorm all of that, to start to get a sense of what things you could start to work on so that you’re moving some of the things that you hate, or that they’re indifferent to, or the clients hate, into the love category, what are some things that you think you could start to investigate research and change in the experience to start to elevate more more of them into the wonderful sort of level, and sometimes that will be engaging with a tool like Lumiant, it’s the thing that will sort of kick start you into that thinking, sometimes you’ll do some smaller things. Before that, before implementing a tech tool, you might come up with an individual, you know, maybe it’s a type of meeting you have that’s drawing them out on their goals, or, like, you could just start adding in some things, you know, and and debating it with your peers with other advisors, hey, I was just thinking of doing this, as anybody tried that, that’s the power of ensemble is really getting together to help help us sort of cut through the pain and suffering and mistakes we all make when we’re trying these new things. You know, I’m a big fan of don’t make the same mistakes as me make new mistakes. So if we all share, then we can get further ahead. So I just encourage really brainstorm it. And don’t, don’t worry initially about what the rules are. And all the things we’re required to do. That’s a given, you know, we’re going to get that right. But just look at it as an experience, look at it, like you would a dining experience, or going to a wonderful theme park experience or any of those things if you’re going to assess what was awesome. And what sort of sucked about it, do the same to the experience your your clients go through with advice, and, and where you can try and turn off our cheerleader bit, you know, where we’re like, No, this is great job, this experience is really good. It might be compared to the peers, you could have a wonderful experience compared to every other advisor in Australia. But when you compared it to the best, I don’t know, you know, spa in Bali, or when you compare it to first class flying, or when you compare it to all these other experiences in life we have, how does it resonate? Then, you know, how does it measure up then? And invariably, we’re gonna go oh, well, no, it’s not as exciting as that, or it doesn’t have that same impact, or they don’t get that same joy or inspiration or, you know, let’s start measuring ourselves against different types of experiences, and see where we can get creative and, and really start to, you know, push the envelope of the way we can engage with the public. I think, you know, if we can do that, and if we can start to think about yes, we need to be efficient, yes, we need to value our time and our clients, but how can we just bring in that magic, right? How can we make it a magical experience? You know, that is a future evolution of financial advice I’m really up for and I’m hoping you are too. Now we’ve come up to work your curiosity corner section here, folks. And you know, to help us build that, that curiosity habit and become closer to being bionic advisors, then the app that I’d love you to take a look at this week is called AI playground. Now the link is somewhat strange. So I’m just going to include it in the episode show notes. It’s a little hard to spell out. But basically, this is a tool that’s trying to give you a sense of the different AI tools out there for things like content creation. So it’s a very specific application of AI, that basically the tool takes your input or request. So when you go into an AI, you you went to a prompt or a question or a request, right. So then it takes that input and it you know, specifically designed for an LLM and we’ll cover what an LLM is in a minute. And it provides you with the different responses. from a variety of AI tools, right, so now what’s an LLM? an LLM is a large language model. And this is a type of artificial intelligence algorithm that actually uses this sort of deep learning technique and really massive large data sets to understand and then summarize, generate and even predict new content. So it’s sort of what’s going on behind Chet GPT, and things like it, right. That’s what an LLM is. And you might have heard the term generative AI, this is closely connected with MLMs. But they’re actually in fact, a type of generative AI, right, that’s, so it’s like the higher category generator of generative how to say AI. And then LLM is are under that category. Because MLMs are specifically, architected architectures that a word designed to help generate text based content, as opposed to other generative AI that might be, you know, images and stuff like that. So what this tool is doing is it’s comparing those AI language models, and there’s so many out there of these MLMs, you know, it can be chat, GPT, GPT, for alpaca all sorts of models. And the AI playground, lets you write a single prompt, and then compare the responses from a selection of models that you might enter, and just work out what works best for you. Right, it’s just, it’s a bit of a matchmaking exercise, right? And you get a sense of what you think will work best for your application of it. Like I said, this is, you know, this is really only for the super keen or curious. But if you are just sort of really trying to play and get a sense of AI, this will be a way for you to get sort of amplify that testing, right to really get a sense of it, and give you that sort of side by side comparison of the different models and the responses that they come up with. So, you know, feel free, have a play and see what happens. Well, it’s a long one step. Thank you for sticking with us, folks. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you’ll get your advice, tech fix auto magically sent to you, ah, Friday. And you know, what, if you need some inspiration in the team, you’re looking to revamp your user experience, you revamp you’re the tech that supports it, maybe the processes, what projects should you have on, then, you know, I’d love to run an in person facilitation for your team to get that humming. It’s a lot of fun. And it can go all sorts of places really designed for you and your team. So if that’s of interest, please reach out to me on LinkedIn, forward slash Peita M D, that’s PEITAMD. Otherwise, I’ll look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember advice explorers Stay curious.
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